• Mentors and Modeling: Learn Everything from Anyone

    by Alexander Becker on September 04, 2006 | Link

    A solution for the lack of mentors and a take on modeling as in imitating the best practices and patterns of excellence of top performers in their fields via direct experience of their actions. The original theory is that anyone can acquire any skill.

    A mentor is a wise and trusted counselor or teacher. While the idea of looking for successful idols in any given field of business is a standard recommendation, it is the path that is naturally the most crowded. In the spirit of an unconventional, dialectic way of thinking, we will discover how to get quality counseling without or beyond the crowds.

    The logical exchange: Use anyone as a mentor for everything. Model what you desire to create after the reflection you receive from bouncing your thoughts and intentions off of your mentor. The reversal of the modeling theory is that anyone can avoid any mistake.

    The mentor acts as a mere catalyst for evoking and shaping certain behaviors, manners, and habits that are found within you. You react positively or negatively, approving or disapproving, to the actions and inactions, successes and failures, of your chosen mentor. This way, literally everyone can be a mentor for anyone.

    While this may sound funny -- it was initially even intended to be humorous in a way -- there is a lot of truth and practical use to get out of it.

    Very simply put, let the mentors you choose, implicitly teach you the virtues you are after. Let them teach you not only by good example, but also -- and eventually foremost -- by bad, negative example. Do the very opposite of your select mentors in areas they did not succeed in or even better -- where they failed badly. You will do at least differently in comparison, avoiding their mistakes, which by itself will save you a great deal of time and potentially money.

    Obviously, modeling the successful is about tracing and following steps -- work hard, imitate precisely and you are virtually guranteed the same results. Lacking the proper mentors though, you have to take the maverick approach -- by taking advantage of a unique capability of the human mind, the spotting of faults, mistakes, and errors in others, the recognition and realization of the negative can be converted and transformed into leads to your own excellence.

    Research the big failures, learn and benefit as you would from replicating the greatest successes.

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